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Movie Description
On the heels of her critically lauded OLD JOY, Kelly Reichardt delivers another deeply resonant portrait of a dying America with WENDY AND LUCY. In OLD JOY, two men provided the heart and soul of the story. This time, the film is centered on a young woman, played with utter conviction and selflessness by Michelle Williams (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN). Williams is Wendy, a down-on-her-luck woman who has driven across-country with her dog, Lucy, in search of a better life in Alaska. Wendy can barely support this journey, and when her car breaks down in Oregon and she becomes separated from Lucy, her predicament becomes even more dire. In a world that doesn't seem to know she even exists, Wendy befriends a local security guard (Wally Dalton), who gives her a tiny fraction of hope.
Considering this film together with OLD JOY, it's obvious that Reichardt has shot up in the ranks of American auteurs. She is becoming a master of minor features that feel like the best short stories, a sort of cinematic Raymond Carver. Credit is obviously bestowed upon the marvelous Williams, who is in almost every shot of the film, and who delivers an astonishingly honest performance. But everything about this film reeks of truth, most noticeably Sam Levy's restrained but beautiful cinematography, and Reichardt's patient editing. WENDY AND LUCY is a tribute to marginalized characters that the movies, and the real world, would usually rather ignore.
Industry Reviews
3 stars out of 5 -- "It's a small story with a big heart that trumps a lot of the louder and more expensive machine-made Hollywood pictures."
Box Office - Marco Cerritos (12/01/2008)
"[Reichardt] has perfected a mode of rapturous minimalism....Williams makes Wendy's total lack of affect luminously expressive." -- Grade: A-
Entertainment Weekly - Owen Gleiberman (12/12/2008)
"[The film] does not include a superfluous word or shot....What happens to Wendy -- and to Lucy -- matters a lot, which is to say that WENDY AND LUCY, for all its modesty, matters a lot too."
New York Times - A. O. Scott (12/12/2008)
"Reichardt's haunting, mournful film engages the texture of a life in which money and hope are equally thin on the ground....Williams' performance is remarkable not only for its depth but for its stillness."
Los Angeles Times - Sam Adams (12/12/2008)
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Kelly Reichardt is a true cinema poet who works miracles in miniature. And she finds the perfect collaborator in Williams..."
Rolling Stone - Peter Travers (01/08/2008)
Included in Entertainment Weekly's 2008 Films Of The Year -- "[A] precise, nearly whispered story....Pay attention, and it grows into a textured ode -- or maybe it's a lament -- to a lost America..."
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum (12/26/2008)
"WENDY AND LUCY is another illustration of how absorbing a film can be when the plot doesn't stand between us and a character."
Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert (01/28/2009)
"Williams's performance is nuanced, moving and well worth any awards she gets."
Washington Post - John Anderson (01/30/2009)
4 stars out of 5 -- "Far more than just a sentimental anecdote about a girl and a dog, on this exciting new director's watch a simple tale becomes the stuff of pure poetry."
Total Film - Samuel Wigley (03/01/2009)
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